lf. We note all
the rich forest foreground, the deep valley beneath us, the
verdure-covered subsidiary ranges, and the strong buttresses of the higher
peaks. But our eyes do not linger there. They unconsciously raise
themselves beyond them to the summit ridge. Nor do we look long
on the distant peaks on either hand. They are over 24,000 feet in
height. But they are not the _highest._ So our eyes pass over peaks
of every remarkable form--abrupt, rugged, and enticing, and we
seek the highest peak of all. And Kinchinjunga is a worthy
mountain-monarch. It is not a needle-point--a sudden upstart which might
easily be upset. Kinchinjunga is grand and massive and of ample
gesture, broad and stable and yet also culminating in a clear and
definite point. There is no mistaking her superiority both in
massiveness and height to every peak around her.

And thick-mantled in deep and everlasting snow though the whole
long range of mountains is, the spectacle of all this snow brings no
chill upon us. For we are in latitudes more southern still than Italy
and Greece--farther south than Cairo. The entire scene is bathed in
warm and brilliant sunshine. The snows are glittering white, but
with a white that does not strike cold upon us, for it is tinted in the
tenderest way with the most delicate hues of blue and pink. They are,
indeed, in the strictest sense not white at all, but a mingling of the
very faintest essence of the rose, the violet, and the forget-me-not.
And we view the distant mountains through an atmospheric veil
which has the strange property of revealing instead of hiding the real
nature of the object before which it stands. It does not conceal the
mountains. It reveals them in their real nature--the spiritual. Each
country has an atmosphere of its own. There is a blue of the Alps, a
blue of Italy, a blue of Greece, and a blue of Kashmir. The blue of
the Sikkim Himalaya, perhaps on account of the excessive amount
of moisture in the air, has a special quality of its own. It seems to me
to have more _colour_ in it--a _fuller_ colour, a bluer blue, a
purpler purple than the atmosphere of these other countries. From
this cause and from the greater brilliance of the sun there is a more
satisfying _warmth_ even in the snows.

So besides beauty in the form of the mountains there is this exquisite
loveliness of colour. In the immediate foreground are greens, fresh
and shining and of every tint. And these shade away into deep
pur